SAN DIEGO COURTS  She has been known for decades as a model volunteer, dedicated to serving the needs of Spanish-speaking foster families. Four years ago, she won a national award for public service.

Now, Virginia Prieto Kelly is a felon.

After deliberating about a day, a jury found the 75-year-old San Ysidro woman guilty Friday of grand theft. She had been accused of stockpiling at her home and at other locations in South County thousands of donated toys that were intended for needy foster children.

She faces a possible sentence of up to five years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Sept. 3.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Louis Hanoian allowed Kelly to remain free on her own recognizance until then.

She showed no overt reaction in the courtroom when the verdict was read. Her attorney, Thomas Matthews, said later that he had to explain to her what happened.

“It’s a sad day in court when you chose to go after a 75-year-old woman who has dedicated her life to helping foster families and essentially anyone who asked her for help,” he said outside the courtroom.

But Deputy District Attorney Chris Ryan said her office considered the evidence when charging Kelly, not her position in the community.

The prosecutor contended during the three-week trial that Kelly, former president of the Latino Foster Parents Association, kept more than 12,000 toys and personal items that had been donated to her organization in recent years. The items — given to Kelly by the Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots Program, the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation and the Polinsky Children’s Center — were supposed to be distributed to children in the same year they were donated.

“She gets them because they trust her,” Ryan said in trial. “Those toys never make it to anybody.”

The District Attorney’s Office began investigating Kelly in December 2008 after hearing reports that she had toys locked in two upstairs bedrooms at her house, and that she had asked a woman to sell some of the items to neighbors.

Kelly initially told investigators she didn’t have toys in her house, the prosecutor said. The investigators then asked to search the home, but she refused.

Later the same day, Kelly was seen with others loading boxes and bags of toys into two cars and unloading them at a Chula Vista storage facility.

In February and March 2009, investigators seized toys from the storage unit, Kelly’s home and a garage at her adult daughter’s house in Chula Vista. Prosecutors said the items were valued at more than $375,000.

Kelly testified that she didn’t sell any items. She said she kept the toys to distribute them later, in case donations dried up.

Her lawyer, Matthews, said Friday that Kelly ran the Latino Foster Parents Association, which serves about 350 families, and had difficulty distributing toys when organizations gave her dozens of duplicates she could not return.

“She maybe took on much more than she could handle,” Matthews said.

The defense attorney said he would argue for probation at Kelly’s sentencing hearing, noting that she isn’t a danger to the public and is caretaker to her 81-year-old husband.